Weather and Traffic

Winter’s arrival Thursday means longer days are around the corner

People who don’t like northern winters are often just as dissatisfied with the short days as they are with the cold temperatures and slushy driving.

If you live in Buffalo, for example, the sun will rise Thursday at 7:44 a.m. and will set at 4:44 p.m. You probably drive to work in the dark and come home from work in the dark. In Chicago, sunrise is at 7:15 a.m. and sunset, 4:23 p.m.

Thursday is the first day of winter — the Winter Solstice occurs at 12:30 a.m. EDT — so for people who dislike short days and long nights, the trend will become their friend. But the amount of daylight increases so incrementally in early winter that it’s hard to notice any change at all.

That’s less true in South Florida, where January sees some dramatic improvement.

In Palm Beach, the sun will rise at 7:05 a.m. on Thursday. But even though daylight “bottoms out” on Dec. 22, the sun continues to rise later until Jan. 4, when it pokes its head over the horizon at 7:10. That remains sunrise until Jan. 21, when it comes up at 7:09 a.m.

We’re already seeing later sunsets, however. For Thursday’s winter kickoff, it will set at 5:33 p.m. and by New Year’s Eve, it will set at 5:38 p.m.

Overall, for the remainder of December we’ll only see a net gain of one minute of daylight. January is a different story — we’ll have a net gain of 27 minutes next month. Jan. 29 will be the first day of the year that the sun doesn’t set until 6 p.m. or later.

The light deprivation capital of the U.S.: Fairbanks, Alaska, where the sun rises on Thursday at 10:58 a.m. and sets at 2:41 p.m.

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Updated holiday weekend forecast: A very toasty Christmas Eve day with a high of 81 degrees, and a breezy low Saturday night of 70. Sunday’s high is also expected to be around 80 degrees.

New Year’s Eve: A chance of rain as a cold front blows through — a high in the upper 70s but mid-50s more likely as the clock ticks toward 2012. Sunshine may return for the first day of the new year, though, with a high in the lower 70s.